This week in the Portal: shared headers and footers, a personal inbox and faster dashboards

This week's Portal roundup covers three changes you will notice the next time you sign in. None of them is large on its own. Together they deal with three everyday problems: repeating the same edit across a site, losing track of what clients have asked for, and waiting on a dashboard before you can read it.

Here is what changed and how each piece works.

HypeSites: reusable headers and footers

HypeSites now support reusable headers and footers.

The header and footer carry the information a visitor relies on to know who they are dealing with: your agency name, your navigation, how to reach you, and the details that belong at the bottom of every page. On most sites that content is identical on every page. When it has to be maintained page by page, it drifts. One page shows an old phone line, another is missing a link, and a visitor gets a slightly different picture of the business depending on where they land.

A reusable header or footer is a single shared block. You build it once and use it across your pages. When something changes, you edit the shared version rather than hunting for every copy.

Why this matters for an agency or MGA:

• Consistency. Every page presents the same identifying details. A visitor sees one version of who you are.
• Less rework. An update is one edit, not one edit per page.
• Fewer stale pages. When there is only one copy, there is no forgotten copy left behind.

We care about this for the same reason we care about data: people trust what is consistent and clear about where it comes from. A site that says the same thing on every page is easier to trust than one that contradicts itself.

A personal notification inbox

The Portal now has a notification inbox that gathers client requests and ticket comments in one place.

Before this, keeping up with activity meant checking where each kind of item lived. A client request sat in one place, a new comment on a ticket in another. If you were busy, it was easy to miss one of them, and the client is the one who notices.

The inbox brings both into a single view. When a client sends a request, it shows up there. When someone comments on a ticket, that shows up there too. You check one place to see what needs your attention.

What this changes in practice:

• One place to start the day. Open the inbox and you see the requests and comments waiting on you.
• Fewer dropped threads. Items do not depend on you remembering which screen to check.
• Clearer follow-through for clients. When requests are visible in one place, it is easier to answer them and harder to let them sit.

This is a small piece of a larger idea we keep coming back to. Transparency is not only about data records. It also means the people doing the work can see, plainly, what has been asked of them and what is still open.

Faster dashboards: loading skeletons and parallel queries

Dashboards got two changes aimed at a faster first paint, meaning the moment the page first shows you something useful.

Loading skeletons

Dashboards now show loading skeletons. A skeleton is a placeholder in the shape of the content that is on its way: grey outlines where panels, rows and figures will appear. Instead of a blank screen or a single spinner, you see the layout of the dashboard straight away, and each section fills in as its data arrives.

This does two things. You know immediately that the page is working, and you can see where the information you want is going to land before it gets there.

Parallel queries

Dashboards also now run their queries in parallel. A dashboard is usually several panels, each needing its own data. When those requests run one after another, the page waits on each in turn. Running them in parallel means the requests go out together, so panels are not held up waiting for the ones ahead of them.

The combined effect is a dashboard that shows its structure right away and fills in sooner.

Why we ship small changes like these

The theme of our work is trusted, transparent insurance data: every record has an owner, every access is visible and logged, and data is shared only with consent. That is the foundation, and it is the reason the industry needs an alternative to opaque data resale.

But trust is also built in everyday moments of using the product. A site that shows the same details everywhere. An inbox where nothing a client asked for is hidden. A dashboard that tells you what it is doing while it loads. These are the parts of the Portal people touch every day, and they should be as clear as the data underneath them.

Where to read more

These updates were first noted in the daily changelog. For the running list of what has shipped, see Tawa daily what's new.

If you use HypeSites, the next time you edit your site is a good moment to set up a shared header and footer. If you handle client requests or tickets, check the new inbox when you next sign in. And if you spend your morning on dashboards, you should find them showing their layout immediately and filling in sooner.

We will keep posting these roundups as changes ship.